Tuesday, May 3, 2011

The Death Of Bin Laden - Who Deserves The Credit?

There are a lot of opinions floating around about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. They vary from elation that an evil man is dead to sadness that our country still resorts to this type of action to accomplish a goal. Since I’m so very shy about sharing my thoughts, I’ll do something unusual today and voice my opinion….

Osama Bin Laden was an evil man. His hatred of the Western world and our way of life, combined with his desire to restore full Sharia law to the Middle East, led to his formation of Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible not only for the massacres in this country on 9/11/01 but for other terrorist attacks on innocent people throughout the world.

It is not known at this time just how much influence Bin Laden still had over Al Qaeda at the time of his death. He had been in hiding since the 2001 attacks and it is believed he had been in Pakistan for about six years. It is also believed he suffered from health problems for several years. Whether he was still calling the shots isn’t known in the civilian world. Either way he was a threat since I’m sure his wishes were carried out whether or not he was still actively leading the group.

While it is somewhat sad to see people reveling and rejoicing over the death of another person, it is certainly understandable. This is the man whose terrorist organization killed over 3,000 innocent people on that day in 2001. His organization is also responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and for countless other terrorist attacks on the Western world over the years. Of course people are happy about it. I, myself, am glad such an evil man is gone from the world. However, I won’t go out in the streets and celebrate, for several reasons, the biggest of which is because Bin Laden’s death won’t change 9/11, it won’t bring back one person who died as a result of Al Qaeda’s actions, nor will it end the conflict in the Middle East.

Will the death of Bin Laden change anything as far as Al Qaeda goes? That is yet to be seen however, I don’t believe it will cause their activity to stop, or even slow down. In fact, as law enforcement, politicians and intelligence sources believe, it’s likely to cause a retaliation of some sort and increase the violence for a while. So was it a good thing to take him out? For that matter, since we’ve seen no pictures or body, is he really dead?

I’ll address the second question first. I believe the government, in this situation, has no reason to lie. If it were a week prior to an election I could possibly see a reason for a conspiracy. Getting Bin Laden a week before the next election would probably secure more votes for the President. But at this stage of the game I have no reason to believe there’s a conspiracy.

There is the problem that we have seen no real proof and the body was dropped into the ocean. Again, while I choose to believe the government is telling the truth, I believe it would be in their best interest to release a photo of Bin Laden in death to quell any disbelief before it gets out of hand.

Some people are politicizing the event and saying Obama didn’t do anything – that it was the CIA and the Navy SEALs who deserve all the credit. Although I am by no means a Barack Obama fan, in this case I think these people are wrong. Obama has been holding secret meetings with the Security Council for months talking about Bin Laden. He put the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, in charge of finding Bin Laden, which was accomplished. (The CIA’s hunt for him has been going on since 2004 and was continued by Obama, making Bush partly responsible for it as well.) He allowed the CIA to use information gleaned from the terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay to help locate Bin Laden’s compound. The President believed in his intel advice and in his Navy SEAL team 6 and signed an order authorizing the covert assault in Pakistan, which was technically against international rules. So the President deserves much credit in this successful operation. If the mission had failed, if we had even heard about it in that case, he would have been labeled a bungler. Instead the plan worked flawlessly and Bin Laden is now dead, and all involved, including the President, deserve the credit for a successful operation.

To those who want to use partisanship to say Obama deserves no credit I ask you – if George W Bush had accomplished this very same thing, in the same way, during his Presidency, would you praise Bush for doing it? If so then Obama deserves that same credit. If you say no I would highly doubt you.

The President, the CIA, the Department of the Navy, and Navy SEAL team 6 all deserve our thanks and our praise for this. Thank you. Thank you all.
Of course, in the words of the great Dennis Miller… “That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.”

About Me

I retired from Federal law enforcement in 2007 after 30 years of government service. I'm a conservative but not a Republican. And we have some problems here but the United States of America is still the greatest country in the world.